Thursday, July 23, 2015

Happy 43rd birthday Seth (yesterday)

To celebrate Seth's birthday I made a cake (with fresh blueberries and lemon peel, iced with whipped cream--he'd have liked it) and invited the neighbors over for cake and comic books. --a chance to introduce new people to his artwork.
When Langdon was here for Comic Con, I had talked to him about Seth's work hiding in boxes where nobody could get the pleasure of them unless they hauled the pages out and one by one lifted them up to view. Langdon suggested getting some presentation portfolio books, so that you could slip pages into them and someone could read them like a large, black & white book. I found one such portfolio at Dick Blick (ONE! The rest had sold at Comic Con.), but that was enough for two Batman issues. More are on order.

So for the neighbors last night, that portfolio of originals went out on a table, plus all the comic books, so they could see what he did. It is a great pleasure to see people go through his work (even if they don't understand just how good it truly is), and exclaim over the details, the various perspectives, the drawing of buildings, just the amount of work that went into Seth's pages. A stranger may read a comic book just for the story, but when the artist is someone you know, then you focus your attention on the artwork.

It's all I wanted: to introduce a few new people to the pleasures of Seth's artwork. His life is less easy to describe, but he put a lot of himself into his artwork, and showing it to some new people suffices.

3 comments:

I got in touch with Seth art work in 2004. Last week, I was looking for some good and old comic books for donation and I found a really nice Green lantern edition with Seth's art. I don't have that comic book anymore, is in hands of a young boy and now I'm glad to know more about his life. My best wishes to all his family, right from Brazil. XD Omar

Hi Omar.I am sorry I am so late in answering your comment. I meant to write something for January 30, which was the tenth anniversary of his death, but I went to visit him at his grave instead (about three hours away from here), and life gets in the way. That's OK too. Seth didn't like people to substitute remembering for living.

So you found a comic book that you wanted, and then gave it away? That sounds very Seth-like too. I am glad you found us. We who love Seth are always glad when other people love him through his art.Vicki